A lecture on September 29, 1968 at The Baltimore Museum of Art by John Canady entitled "The Artist, The Critic, and the Public". John Canady was a leading American art critic, author and art historian. Canaday taught art history at the University of Virginia School of Architecture and Newcomb College of Tulane University in New Orleans. From 1953 through 1959, he was Chief of the Division of Education of the Philadelphia Museum. In 1959, Canaday began a 17-year career as a leading art critic for the New York Times. In his first column on September 6, 1959, he inflamed the art establishment by proclaiming that Abstract Expressionism, the dominant style of the period, allowed "exceptional tolerance for incompetence and deception. The lecture, which was cosponsored by the Print Club of Baltimore and The Baltimore Museum of Art was his personal view of the art world with a discussion of the critic's function as middleman between the creator of a work and the viewer. He concluded with a question and answer period.

Transcript

Interviewer: Currently membership entrance for all children of members on the first things can be, there will be opening of the (Inaudible) open before it is dropped up that after (Inaudible) and I will not forget 50s at 2D Events is the first is the film stories with 50 year dedicated to studies of the use of time of various sorts and film. The opening film program would be various kinds of time used to achieve different facts and Eisenstein's work like Potemkin, Riefenstahl's, Olympia and others. And as before, our special moderator for the series William Forshaw from Enoch Pratt Free Library. The person bobs throughout the year will be on October 17th. These are to offer you opportunity to visit outstanding art collection within bushing distance. This will be to especial exhibition all through (Inaudible 1:07) Picasso's with time for viewing also the permanent collection of (Inaudible 1:16) 17th of October. Our own shows, I think, you know the present exhibition of palette works of art on paper and Norman Carlberg Sculpture in the Central Port, soon go up an exhibition through up the museum scattered them and our permanent exhibits of recent accessions and very soon the primitive gallery, they works for their gallery and this level will be reopened having been completely reinstalled. You have trouble tripping over lose tiles on the floor and I urge you to be careful, not to do that. That's because when the source right took place here, the sanitation strike lower backed up into this auditorium and the tile became lose. I think they are all lying down further quietly, now who walk on firmly here safe. Today, I'm not to welcome the bottom or print club to the group of organizations under sponsorship or I should say with whom we co-sponsor events here in the museum. The young audiences, The Baltimore Chamber Music Society and now The Baltimore Print Club. The great thing to get to have got started and the people who have done this are to be, I think, applauded. It's a non-profit corporation under the laws of Maryland with a wonderful purpose to a quite all Baltimore and to wish to be acquainted with the processes of the graphic arts to help them develop an interest and to develop them or either risking the modifying arts and at an economic level that is not exclusive for prints are being modifying arts are certainly and not like individually created single works and is also for us to encourage collecting in Baltimore. Collecting itself is a like living on the top floor. I am reminded of professor Poplin at the Harvard who lived in a dusty old garret at the top of Harlosh House and his friends tried to get him to move and he said no, I shall always live on the top floor. He said, it's the only place in Cambridge where nobody is above me but God and then he stopped for a moment and he said but he is (Inaudible 3:37) but he is very quite. (Laughs). Collecting is like travelling, you know, in another sense too. It's a sort of more as and said it is better to travel than to arrive, it's better to ask them to answer one could also say and is good to ask the question and confront the material. That's something you can always do of course, if you have your own friend's collection. Collecting requires imagination and recently someone pointed out rather ask the question what if generation from now as is more probable, we arrived at a four day work week, it's evidence that imagination will play a major role during the other three days. This is another place where we feel that the Print Club is a forward looking and important new organization. The present exhibition which you see in the Print Paul at his level of the museum was put together by the Print Club and co-sponsored by both the Print Club that is and the bottom on The Museum of Art and I'm sure you had a chance to look at it. Some of you applying, some of you perhaps only briefly but it will re-word, almost any modest study you care to give it you will find something not only interest but exciting, through the exciting and the very high quality of the individual works in the present exhibition. Above the Print Club itself I should say a word, there are to date after a brief period of announcement, about eighty members and this member increases daily and it looks as older, would perhaps be managed very soon as hundred and fifty members of this Print Club. Hundred and fifty people who are interested and perhaps with passion who devoted to this particular form of visual arts. The club should tell you who the offices are as recently formed with a very fine set of by-laws and incorporation statement. The treasurer is Mark Superior, the vice president is William Thomason. The secretary is Hartman Rotten, and the president, the newly elected president is Victor Carlson, the curator, prints and drawing here. My pleasure now to ask Mr. Carlson to introduce the person whom I'm trying to listen and the Michael counter him up of the back door here now. Here is Victor Carlson. We run out of seats down here is we have got this way. (clapping).
Mr. Carlson: A very great pleasure for me. This is my first schedule in public duty to have introduced such a noted and my (Inaudible) enjoyable so far. I have heard this economy talk for once when I was a graduate student and came up to know all the great things out of text at that time. I'm glad that (Inaudible) time earlier in this afternoon looking at works or art of the member arriving, talking about and discussing one's attitude and how the certain works of art effective. Mr. Kennedy says that while he has been collector he joined the staff and then what maybe immediately presents the kind of person once it have a bigger profit and then he immediately called several other things that he was joining yet before he has joined staff. And this sort of acquisitive attitude I think, is always a good time, because this economy well knows people who feel deeply about works or art are inclined to be very separating expressing their feelings. Mr. Kennedy studied in English, career associated with (Inaudible 7:55) of University life and with the educational purpose in Philadelphia Museum but he left into greater prominent practice with his first part (Inaudible 8:07) New York Time. He has subsequently not been hesitant of putting himself in forefront of a great deal primary charged of rather emotional criticism. But I imagine he takes that (Inaudible 8:24) does because as a collector he knows exactly what is his feel deeply above certain works of art. Mr. Kennedy will speak today on the artists, the critics and public. (clapping).
Mr. Kennedy: I'm talking about the artists, the critic and the public, because I'm talking mostly about myself. I can speak for only one critic and that is me. What I say is actually in the context of a critic who writes for a large public or at least for a paper with a large circulation rather than a critic as a person arise primarily for other critics. I discovered long ago that I do not write for other critics, although they seemed to read me the way one, you know, by it's own making too. I called this the artistic critic and the public, I have these little cards here which are kind of guy, this what I'm tend to say but I might go off in another direction. At the end of what I'm going to say I usually talk about 45 minutes, sometimes it's difficult for me to know how long to going on but at the end of it I'm going to see if there are any questions, because I like questions. They are really the only reason for lecturing ever because sometimes somebody pops to questionnaire too, and all of a sudden you realize that you've been talking from a kind of background of assumption which you've never bothered to put into words and somebody will ask you question and all of a sudden you got put it into words and they criticize sometime for you. The most interesting one that I was ever asking the friends since was, well, if you think artist such a mesh why do you go on spend your life dealing with it all the time. And incidentally I answered that question in couple of columns that I've discovered long since you can repeat whatever you've said in the column, when you're giving a talk because contrary to your hopes everything you've written is not burned itself into the public consciousness. The reason I spend my time dealing with art isn't only that I got off and sort of a wrong foot as an adolescent that wasn't true at all. Somebody did give me a book of whole binds drawings and from then on I was lost. But the reason I continue to spend my life dealing with art and the reason I find it rewarding all the time is simply that art when you come down to it it's the most important thing in the world, isn't it. An economist would tell you that the economical structure was, anybody interested in anything else would tell you that, that was for me art is the most important thing in the world, that's all. Because it teaches me everything, you know, this is supposed to be the end of my talk. Well, I'll cut you off a short then. It's just that philosophy never made end to the anything to me, until I saw the visual expression of philosophies in art. History never came alive for me until I saw its visual manifestation in art whether they are with architecture, I think architecture has taught me more about history then anything else. Architecture sculpture are painting and I blame so much about myself too just from looking at what other people specially paintings, because painting is the most portion of the art, have said about themselves. Well, let me answer to that question about why I go ahead (Inaudible 12:39) it. I think, if we're going talk about the artistic critic in public there is one card, you have all the second card here is one that I wrote on this further moment and says check in with this head off, which remind me of another question that I couldn't answer quite when it was asked from the floor somebody said, how can you deny that painting is in state of great vitality in America today when so much of it is being produced and so many different things are going on and is also exciting in everything. So, I discovered the answer that one later on which was that the chicken with his head chopped off is really much more exciting and much more agitated and everything else then alive chicken, but after all it is dead. Getting to back probably meant to begin I was going to say if I going talk about the artistic critic in the public I think you've to define a little bit what you meant by artist. Now mostly I mean when I talk about artist I usually mean painting because although I'm fascinated by architecture and although I love sculpture, in the end painting is for me the great art. I'll be using the terms artist and painter more or less interchangeably. Well, now, what is an artist, what is a great painter? The greatest painters, the greatest artist does not affect his true sculptors, writers, musicians anything. The greatest artists are people who like most of us any of us who really have a right to call ourselves alive or receptive to a million impulses that come to us from what we see, from what we touch, from what we experience emotionally and so what just every all the time that were awake. But then this artist has -- the person who is a great artist has some very special kind of thing that goes on inside him through which he is able to not only to assimilate this and sometimes you know, an artist doesn't assimilate by analyzing it . There is a kind of instinctive, a kind of inborn, there is an innate receptivity and understanding on the part of artist which also many of us have. But the artist is a person who have something huger gift, it isn't just to clap our hand, it isn't just an air for rhythm, anything like that, but the great artist is the person who has this ability somehow to take this in and then to give it out again in the form of a painting or sculpture or a play or upon that not only explains it to the rest of us and frequently explains it of course in the way that you can't re-explain in words and which not only explains it for the rest of it, clarifies it, illuminates it, the experience of our lives but also stands as a record for the future which tells us what the people of a certain time feel it. We know, as far as I'm concern and I read, I know more about the Greeks from what they built and what they carved then from what they wrote. There are other forms receptivity perhaps Greeks sculpture and architecture means less than they written Greek philosophical statements to other people, but for me the greatest artists are the people who do this wonderful thing for the rest of us. Now, obviously those men are fairly rare and we have a when we grow very harsh about -- when critics go very harsh about painters today and we're said we should be more lenient, so what. What people are forgetting are forgetting is that the art of the past has been winnowed for a long time and in any ten years the number of great artist that worked in the past centuries after all the number of artists work may have been in the many hundreds. Those who we still think of are done to just a few and yet in ten years in New York I'm literally asked to say something like seven thousand shows. That's throughout a silly. There are not seven thousand people born to be artist and when you suck most of them away either don't review them at all or say harsh things about them are indicated to perhaps they are not to a man Nicole Angeles, you're only recognizing the fact of life. The taste to be obscured because we write too much about artist. These truly great artist who are channels for the great expressions of the time become confused today with the persons who have very considerable talent who make mistake of thinking that talent is something rare. Talent grows on trees in Miss Miracle contest to which I'll have occasion to refer a letter in a very flattering context, there you had a song, (Inaudible 18:12) get to it, I was the judge in that contest. I was asked to be a judge in that context about two or three years ago and my staff made up among the young bucks around the New York Times so in extent you wouldn't believe but anyway they had a song called everybody has got talent and all those some of the fifty contestants in that (Inaudible 18:34) denied the song. The talent is, I think, everybody has got talent sort of when he comes to painting. It's the demands made upon the painter and the Charley technical business that eliminates certain ones is incompetent are very much relaxed. Everything now depends upon feeling, everything also depends upon, really the artist's own word that he is pretty good. Now, I don't mean that exactly but what I mean is that we're so afraid of asking very much of the artistic shape that he release himself that anybody who releases himself with even a modicum of grace and something it seems to be a manual talent is taken seriously as a painter or we're asked to take him seriously as a painter. Now, this too of course is amateurism which is the real curse of contemporary art today and this card contains a list of artists consider professionals, that I think are only amateurs I'm not going read it. This is a circumstance of course that we're the first time in the world, the first generation in the world I think to tolerate. The reason we do it is that painting is I think a residual art today just as punching is a residual sport. Now that comparison expresses to me so completely the state of painting today. Painting is a residual art just as punching is a residual sport and that when it was made to me in a letter by Erwin, the late Erwin Panofsky, a greatest art scholar of all time as far as I'm concerned in the most entrancing personality. I wrote to him and asked him who wouldn't write me an essay for the New York times on that subject. He wrote and said no, he didn't think he would but so, then I wrote him back and said well, I want to use that as a first paragraph in article, and said that I got the original expression from you. He wrote back that no, no, don't do that. Just music, I'll tell you in a minute how he elaborated the definition. He said it is perfectly good humanistic practice to use what somebody else has given you and so what has been done for generations. So that I wrote him back and said well, then I'll use the thing and say I use the quote and says from the greatest living art scholar, now this is terrible because I forgot the name, but he said well, don't worry. Nobody will know it's me, everybody will think you're talking about Sir- Sir Herbert Read, which of course is pretty good taste. Well, anyway, so, I went ahead and used it. I have been using it ever since, but he said for instance, said, there was a time when it was necessary for men to know how to use his sword for the protection of his life, his honor and his parse. But with the invention of gun powder and one thing and other this was no longer necessary but the sword, the art of the sword continue to be used simply by people who enjoyed doing it for itself and for people who enjoyed just watching it as, otherwise pointless activity. That's where there is painting today. It used to be necessary. The painter used to be a necessary person, because there were churches to be decorated, public buildings to be decorated, portraits to be painted before the photograph came into do the job. Records to be kept before the recent combat of the (Inaudible 22:55) so and so on. But with the invention of a camera corresponding to the invention of gunpowder and with various changes, various other changes the painter is now a residual a displaced citizen just as the defense there is a practice in our residual sport. That's only a slight exaggeration and spite of fact that it is of course a very gloomy one. There is an immediate rebottle always when our useless people jump up and say oh but the painter is necessary because the painter afford all of us this emotional religious expression etc. etc. that I have been talking, talking about already, the painter as a great person. But you see, I think, the fact that the painter is not really needed. The fact that painter has lost his birth right to an extent the sculpture has not quiet that the architect has that at all, because architectures are great art today, there is no mistake about that. Architectures has been demanded and we've demanded in new forms, circumstances demanded new forms, architecture has grown, is developed. It's a completely original and (Inaudible 24:01) but not painting. Painting, when you say after all painting who feels for as this emotional release thing actually they added the point of view in which that remark is made is that the person who sort of you know, sitting back, divorced from life and sort of needs, a little toy, little emotional, little released toy, which the painter supplies. As usual I'm overstating a little bit but I think it's little better to overstate and the (Inaudible 24:28) around. So, now, the only excuse for a painter defined today is if we simply cannot live without it. And if a person absolutely have a compulsion to paint it might indicate of course that he really is the person whose compulsion is a symptom of something that he truly does have to give us. I used to paint at least I went through the Yale Art School. I came up, actually I want all kinds of prizes, I could draw, I could do all these things and one day I realized well, I was pretty good at quick classy sketches but I was also pretty good at egg tempara painting which is very, very, very tight and very slow. I used to do more and more egg tempara painting because the quick sketches piled up so fast, now I had an (25:33) full of them. One day I was working away on one of these things and I realized that what I was doing this, the way people do in broad way. It was the pastime. I asked myself a question, does it really make any difference to anybody whether you finish this painting or not and the answer of course was no, it didn't make any difference to anybody else. Then I asked myself the important question which was is it make a lot of difference to you yourself? I said to myself, does it make much difference to me? And you know, I didn't. I put that thing away with great relief and held a fire-sell in (Inaudible 26:10) Virginia where I was teaching in University Virginia. Friend and I had a big house are hung everything up, charged the price of the materials plus 50 cents an hour my estimate on what I have spent on the various things and you know, it was a sell out. I may say (Inaudible 26:29) Virginia is still lousy with candidates, they are all over(laughs). But I just asked one of those people who has this tremendous compulsion with me and worked as (Inaudible) I started writing immediately and in writing I apparently was better than this other stuff that for some reason I started doing on account of somebody having given me that volume of whole bind drawing. But the fact of course that the only valid reason for a painter to paint is that he has got to. The only valid reason is that he cares, shows I think it is pretty definite proof of how things have gone and to reverse, how painting is the residual art. I don't think that very many if any of well, it say to great renaissance masters would be painters today. I don't think Nicolle Angelo would be a painter. I'm surely and neither would be a painter. Men like Mantania who comes as close to being my favorite painter as anyone men can do. I don't think would ever have been a painter. For this reason that boys were apprenticed as painters if they seemed to have a certain scale and even any - almost anybody, you know, almost an intelligent person can learn to draw and contrary to public thing the renaissance with full of people who does learn the patience of the (Inaudible) full of very dull renaissance painting, but he would do this, he would learn this craft. He would arise in his profession. He became more and more and much respected man although in the early renaissance the artist is only a kind of super craftsman, but he kept it worked because there were commissions to do. His services were required and when he was given a commission he talked over what he was to do with the church or the individual who is commissioning it. They would say, no, I want two sides on this side, I want two sides on this side. My wife's faith on saint is so and so, mine is so and so, put them there. And then this saint because that's the saint which the church (Inaudible) there were more or less told what to do and although some of the great men like Giovanni Bellini would in his old age accept only commissions of exact that the kind he wanted to do and refused to work for little means like (Inaudible) who tried to tell him what to do. In spite of that fact they were artists because there was a lot of work for him to do and a man like Mantania or man like Bellini and so what would more have gone on painting pictures if there had not been a demand for. They would never painted them in first place if they hadn't been required, if the market hadn't come to them then a carpenter for instance if there were nothing for him to do would sit around, driving nails into a board. It would just the activity what would seen to them that pointless, but you see how it's reversed today, the painter paint what he pleases and then puts it on sale with such a panic condition we won't even think of it today. But the picture on sale for people and ask them to like it and the part of the critics job of course is to convince people if they do like it. And it's all together I think an extremely well, residual situation. In calling this, in giving out a title for a talk artist, critic and public actually, of course, we have skipped one very very important person and that is the dealer. If the critic is a kind of middle man between the artists and the public the dealer is still a middle man between the artist and the critic. To an extent that is very seldom recognized, he is also a middleman between the artist and the museum. Our claim that the most influential person in the development of American Art not today but until a couple of years ago over a period of almost ten years actually was not Alfred Bar at the Museum of Modern Art or any other person in the museum world, but the dealer Leo Castelli who was the most adventurous, the most - trying to think of a word there, I have quote a several but I'm not going to use them -was the most adventurous dealer in hunting up new talents and in propagating new movements. Running in close second was Sidney Jenus but Sydney Jenus was always came in just a little letter when the thing had been established and it was time for the build up. If you would analyzed the museum of modern art shows called Ten Americans, Fourteen Americans or what not arranged by Ms. Michele over there, over a ten years, you see the Leo Castelli's man who're owe -I would have (Inaudible) seventy percent. I may be wrong there but anyway they were very very strongly represented. Now, this is all right because in a situation like ours you have got to have the dealer to hunt up the talent. Art critics can't spend all their time, I'm frequently asked to look at art, of course, I'm always asked to, but that's not your job. It's a full time job to paired up two or three people a year to add to your stable with your dealer. Now, good art dealer is of course the ideal art dealer, is a man who sought replaced the renaissance art pattern as the discover and the developer of talent. And the best dealer is a dealer of great sensitivity with the fresh vision with a knowledge of the art of the past from which he may more or less engaged the path of the art of the future and open mind and a very sincere wish for the well being of his artist. But the hitch in the whole deal is that the dealer is necessarily a merchant because in order to support his artist in order to run his gallery and so what obviously he has got to sale pictures and if you are a merchant today, merchandizing means from motion, from motion means the creation of a market that means the creation of fashion and the creation of fashion means dependants on (Inaudible) that should never be the province of painting. And so the dealer in order to stay alive as of much needed middleman between the artist and the museum and the critic and the public must cultivate nullity. One movement doesn't get a chance to even if he is off on a legitimate track even if discovered something potentially very big and very expressive it doesn't get a chance to develop because next year you've got to have something else. If nobody has to follow another, artist something that grows rather slowly, we think of the fifteenth century, the great period of art as a tremendous explosion, because we see this century as a whole and all of a sudden in Florence (Inaudible) art is seemed to be on every street corner and new things were well perspective was investigated and all (Inaudible) who made on and on, they just burgeon. And yet you read your history in terms of decades and not so much happened in anyone ten years and in ten years now in New York we have been promised at least and maybe four revolutionary movements each of which is the biggest thing that have ever happened since the sixteen ceiling. Warning up with the death of abstract expressionism going on and to pop art, up art, and now minimal art. I would like to say parenthetically and my parent to see is don't stop soon, it can be too bad. That actually parenthetically about minimal art, you know what I mean, in minimal sculpture the greatest thing and quite probably the greatest piece of minimal sculptures so far, is Smith Cube. Just the cube. Just the six foot cube, that's all. A cube with one, two, three, four, -- a cube has six size limit. Six size, each six feet a cube still cube, that's all. That's the last piece of minimal sculpture, probably because without being just nothing that's about his minimal as you can get. And then Kenneth Noland who is not the most minimal of painters, the most minimal of painters of course were anticipated by Eveland who simply painted a canvas salad blue, that was minimum. Kenneth Noland who paints stripes, bands of color, a long canvas which may go to 35 or 40 feet. Let me say that in the way he is a very impressive painter and may get around to saying why I think so. I mean it, sincerely. I think, he is a very impressive painter but, these minimal artists have finally got around, you know, to recognizing, I think the encouraging thing and a pony perverse sort of desperate and tragic way, the encouraging thing about the minimal artists is that they are the first group of artists who have recognized and in their statements have admitted that painting is a residual art. Essentially, they say this. They recognized that humanistic expression to which painting is always been dedicated is for some -for whatever reason, no longer possible in painting. And you know, it's true because in spite of the fact that I yearn for contemporary or humanistic in painting, humanistic statement in painting I must admit that virtually all of the painters who tried to make it are really second right talents or at least produced only second right painting. I think, it is significant among other things that the assassinations beginning with John Kennedy's and then tapering off virtually no one tries any more, but the assassination for instance produced not an art of the emotional power, but absolutely the mostly drag of the most (Inaudible) so called memorial paintings in New York that you can possibly imagine. When the most terrible events of our time the most affecting events emotion distinguish people with artist who try to paint the Vietnam war. You can begin to approach in the painting the power of a single photograph. When the most terrible events of our time in the most emotion of staring can produce only a third and fourth grade art, then painting is really lost in that old function. So, I have always said, you know, as all critics always said, for instance about abstract expressionism we have said no, no it is not a new art, it is simply an art in which the ends, color, line etc, etc. are used as I mean the means are used as ends in themselves that they expressive and is lost. The abstract expressionists claimed that in this rowing around of color of course they were rather purifying, the expressive end by using the means without any kind of illusion of reality, any reference to nature and so what. Well, they weren't actually, but the minimal artist, this is one long parenthesis, the minimal artists say that they are dealing only with means. They have no end except to employ the means and to reduce the means to their absolute essential. They are going to use color, use of moles like (Inaudible), we can just divide in half and paint it one color on one side and one color on another. As a sculptor you can go much beyond that tube of Tonesmith but you can like a man whose name I forget, I saw no reason for remembering it, do a series of planks, three and shoes stick. Now, you saw this is not an absurdity exactly because he recognized why I was doing it. Three inch stick about 12 inches width and about 8 inches tall, just planks painted in different colors and each plank is an individual work of art and there, it is very nice and for hanging problem you just lean them against the wall, but their point is that since nothing but the means is left to the artist. Then the more pure the means the better they are. They say we must no longer try to respond to art emotionally. Nothing is important in art now, except the fact that you are taking the trouble to look at it and whatever you want to think about it in the way of analyzing and so forth, your response is not, the idea is not to increase your apprehension of the world, the idea is not to clarify or intensify experience which has always been the province of art and still layers in the art and literature and music world. But it is simply art at least painting, some extent sculptures simply a matter of the artist applying with some people look at and think about and so these planks in the way of our springboards, just springboard whatever we want to do, but of course this is to relative this again as I said is what is tragic about it. Now, the argument for minimal art is that possibly having striped art down to it very less point before disappearance possibly when things can't go any lower. They will come back up again and the minimal artist although not trying to do with themselves say that from here perhaps we will go forward to the new art that we have all been looking for ever since cubism which I think was well, its obviously most important movement of the 20th century and one that has not even been approximate of importance by any other. Well, we were talking about the dealer, for instance the dealer is all out for minimal art now, but Mark I must say is minimal itself. Which is not surprising and this doesn't like so much difference to the artist themselves, most of them have enough money to live on who go into this kind of thing, but the fact that this kind of thing could exist at all you see, is simply approved that the dealer being a business has to keep on developing a new line of good. I presumably wonder what when the term modern art is no longer applicable obviously after the year 2000, we are not going to be able to call 20th century modern art, what they are going to call it, I think well, probably experimental art, but you know, promotional art wouldn't be too bad a name. I just have a little parenthetical note on this card here which when we say that our art is almost entirely an art of selling, selling to the public not only in dollars, with selling ideas you know, usually, and the very very early in the 19th century himself said religious society produces relics, a military society produces trophies and a commercial society produces trade good. So, we think we were producing trade goods today and yet even previously and more, well, hundred and fifty years ago. Thought that the art of his time as trade good, maybe I know that it just close to it, it is not as desperate as it looks. Well, what about the critic. We defined the artist more or less. Some ideas of what the critics' job is and isn't. I think the critics job is not to judge the artist on his good intentions. As far as, -- I can talk to you forever about what he thinks he has done in this painting and so forth. And also what dealer can take him on the floor, the artist says as really learn to express himself will take him on and say, and say, I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to that, I don't care what. An artist is trying to do, I cannot accept an artist on its good intention. As far as I'm concern you can talk forever about his thing, it's like to me whether proof of pudding is in the eating not in the recipe and as far as I'm concerned the proof of the marital work of art is in the achievement, the work of art, not in the fear arising that goes into an incomplete performance of it. So, but, it's perfectly true you know, that artist expect to be judged on their intention rather than upon their achievements, their achievements. Not in the case of Kenneth Noland the critic Kenneth -not Kenneth, Greenberg we are going to say, whatever his name as Greenberg good friend of mind accepted Noland years ago on the theory of his color adjustments and so forth and I must admit that lately Noland's work has seemed to me to justify that confidence. But for one thing I don't -no matter how good Noland is, the whole growth still so artificial when it is nurtured by a critic and so what rather than demanded by life that I think it is a perversion of a critical function and also a recognition of the artist doesn't amateur. I'm getting around not to this thing about Miss Miracle when I judged it, so long ago, there was a little and she was really charming. I think it is matter of fact she won the award that year for Miss Congeniality which the girl themselves award and they supposedly very coveted. Well, this little girl was a belly dancer and she did the dying swan. This year I noticed on television. I am not been asked back to (Inaudible). I noticed that another girl did the dying swan, just about to say in level of performance. The dying swan is not an easy thing to do. You know, it's all on the points right up their on the end of the toes and the dancer comes in supposed to looking is, he is on water, you have all seen it done by somebody in the Belly Rush or something in it. It's very lovely, it's a perfect corn, but it's quite lovely. She comes around, she really seems to floats and you know, on every motion flows into (Inaudible) then somebody pops her on and she is wooed in the wing and she sinks and the movement become a little broken and so where she finally she goes down. It's a lovely piece of narrative dancing. Well, little girl came out and she had all the choreography dance pat alright, except that there seemed to be no connection between one movement and another. She learned the (Inaudible) disposition and then they are in disposition so about and her whole performance seemed to well, it look like a movie of the death of the dying swan out of which every other frame had been removed. And, so, it was really terrible, although she was said a charming girl. Well one of the judge that year was Alexander Kun, the art co-producer and he wanted to give this girl the prize in talent and I said Mr. Kun, I think you're absolutely mad and he said well, look do you realize that, that girl had overcome a very serious heart condition to become a belly dancer. I said I really don't think that makes a performance anybody, and he said not only that, but she had a sore toe. So, look Mr. Kun the next time you're doing an expensive musical and so what I want you to come out ahead of time in front of the card and say fox, this little girl is going to dance for you now, the dying swan, really isn't very good, is not only a good performance but I want you fox to remember who paid ten dollars for your seat to remember that she has overcome a serious heart condition and is dancing with a sore toe. And you know, how that would go with the audience. Well, I actually think you know, that painters ask us to make something as a same concessions to them. They talk about dedicating their lives to painting and wives especially always writing the letters about how their husbands have dedicated their lives to painting and the fact that they are not very good painters or at least not very successful painters. See, it's the some reason why I should be kind to them, always my job to be kind to people, it doesn't my job to pack people for entering a dubious profession. It is seemed curious to me that no, why they writes me and tells me that her husband is a dedicated businessman but he is not doing very well in business and, well, please come around and give him some business because he is dedicated. You know, the fact we think of the artist is the curious creature who shouldn't be subjected to any of the normal hazard of success, struggle, failure and so forth. Simply indicates I think that the artist has the painter has no real, not really legitimate and requires spot. There are plenty of them who do make a lot of money and is surprising to me how many painters whose names are never heard of go along quietly selling year after, year after year and do pretty well just because they do satisfy (Inaudible), of course, I am indeed (Inaudible) because they mark they are usually satisfying is one I don't like, don't approve of, but the critics do not owe anybody, abode of thanks and if I'm going to have time for question I have got, talking about five minutes, but then secondarily I say it is not the job of the critic to make something happen. It is not the job of the critic to stare up interest and not to advocate new movements to take part in their conception. People always saying to me well, (Inaudible) I think the critic should not know artist, shouldn't (Inaudible) with them. I know that I have lost a great deal because I stick very closely to the policy, as not knowing artist. Those that I do know that I have come in contact with for, you know, unavoidable reason or something, I always run a great deal from them. But sometimes I think, I learn too much, because you, so many of them are (Inaudible) people and you do get this sympathetic feeling toward what they are doing and you tend to overlook the fact that there is no reason for what they are doing to be done and that very frequent if they are not doing it very well. I was seduced into a debate on television some years ago which I hope everybody who saw it has forgotten with Thomas Hass, the editor of Art News and his said you don't stand for anything, because Thomas Hass was the great protagonist for abstract expressionism. He said you don't stand for anything. What do you for? He said, you can't just seat around, awaiting for something to happen. Well, I think of course, a critic can. He just sit around, he waits for what's happening and then he talks about it. He evaluates it. He doesn't make it happen. He said what do you for? I said well, I guess, I'm for good painting. He said, oh, nonsense anybody can be for good painting, to which I replied then why aren't you? But I replied it too weeks later one day in the shower, when I (Inaudible) and (laughs) all which we graded that miss the opportunity. The critics job is to evaluate that's all to evaluate paintings, to evaluate movements, to evaluate the position of the artist in society. People would ask me how do you evaluate a painting. They expect me to make a list of points on which is judged. Now, I know I look for line, I know I look for color, I know I look for conversation all these things. It's like, I mean looking your painting when you looked at them all these times is like, well, just talking. You don't stop the think, subject, predicate, adverbs and so forth. No, when you're looking at the painting you stop to break it up in it's component parts maybe do after a while the way you sometime you write the sense and have to analyze it. But actually there was a man who's developed what he calls the system called, oh, it is called the art on meter but it's almost like that and he has ten points one on line, one on color and everything and you, one is expressive this and oh, I don't know. You there (Inaudible) and you score the painting on the basis of one to ten the way you marking the exam paper and put it down a little column. And you add them all up and divided by ten and if it makes as much as ninety it's an excellent painting. If it makes as little as fifty it doesn't so good and so forth. Well, that is only actually reducing to absurdity the kind of thing people want and all the art appreciation courses naturally are filled with students who come in expecting you to make that list of things but the truth is as to how I evaluate a painting that I can look at many and many painting which in so far as I can analyze it, leaves up to everything I want the painting to be. Color is impeccable, drawing is impeccable, arrangement is impeccable, serious attitude on the part of the artist which I don't require, but anyway, you know, harming between attitude of all the things whatever and it can be an absolutely worthless painting and I can also see a painting which violets many things that I think I demand in painting and it's a wonderful painting. These paints are pleases in a great deal. In the end the evaluation of a painting I think depends on responses that have become so complicated and so subtle with me I know that the reflection of an artist's personality points seems it's much less important than the reflection of the society in which he worked. Reevaluation had become so subtle, which you cannot really innumerate them. But that (Inaudible) it is more less where I evaluate now, as for the we had the painter and the critic that leaves the public. I don't think I really need to define the public. One thing I have never understood about them is why they will come in to listen the somebody talk on a beautiful day, but of course, that is a very enduring eccentricity on the part of everybody, but as far as reading, I think the relationship as a public to a critic. I think he, -- they owe him a sort of an intelligent reading. I must say that the critic also owes the public a clear statement. I think, that any critic who writes in (Inaudible) any critic who has to make up words to say what he is trying to say, any critic whose statement of his response is so complicated that it cannot be figured out either doesn't know anything about painting or doesn't know anything writing and in either case he has no business being a critic. Actually, you know, I think a critic is first of all writers. His opinions are not as important as he is stating the mean away that stimulates the response and that is the reason it makes me mad when I have two kinds of readers I don't like. There are some readers who hate me so that no matter of what I say you know it is nonsense and I get hit mail all the time from people, but the other kind is a kind who reads without consciousness that criticism, at least criticisms I regarded is in really in a form of dialogue with the reader when I said the state of flat opinion. I do not know want to say in my opinion so on so what's yours, but I expect everything I write to be compared in the sort of talking back and forth. I visualize a sort of vague (Inaudible) out there who is responding to what I write and sometimes questioning it, sometimes accepting it and so forth, but I discover some people don't read this way. They think that anything the critic says the regard as the blatant true, but I am not going to go around saying in my opinion or it does seem that or in certain aspects of and so forth, there is one critic I took and one of his articles marked up every qualifying portion of the sentences in my opinion, it would seem, well. There was only about half of the article left by the time I cross those all out, but people are sometime so funny, you know, I wrote up in (Inaudible) who wants just for fun I allow myself a humorous speech now and then (Inaudible) I said was a sweet little old lady who would likely commenting some prominence in the art world and now wanted to bring her to everybody's attention. I said Ms. Cross who works at the bottom of an abandoned elevator shaft because she likes high ceilings. Now, when you began the suspect something.

Publisher (Electronic Version)

Archives and Manuscripts Collections, The Baltimore Museum of Art;

Holding Institution

Baltimore Museum of Art;

Date Original

1968-09-29

Date Digital

2011

Type

Sound;

Format

Digital reproduction of one sound tape reel, 57 minutes, 23 seconds

Source

Audiovisual Collection, AV.RR.15.A

Coverage (Time Period)

1961-1970;

Rights

Permission to reproduce this item is required and may be subject to copyright, fees, and other legal restrictions. For more information, please contact: E. Kirkbride Miller Art Research Library, Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, (443) 573-1778, bmalibrary@artbma.org